Suffragette Prisoners’ Day – 13 October

By Emily Jane Cowan
Emily is a PhD candidate at the University of Liverpool, specialising in the lived experiences of working-class women in Victorian and Edwardian Lancashire

The Suffragette Fellowship was founded in 1926 by WSPU member Edith How-Martyn, with the aim of keeping alive ‘the suffragette spirit’ by remembering the people and events that helped women gain the vote. With this aim in mind, membership was open to anyone who had been a member of any suffrage society – not just the WSPU – direct descendants of prisoners, and sympathisers who were invited by the group’s council. They celebrated three key events annually, and each February a magazine titled Calling All Women was produced, recapping the previous years’ events. The three key events that they celebrated were Votes for Women Day (6th February), Emmeline Pankhurst’s birthday (14th July), and Prisoners’ Day (13th October).

Prisoners Day was held to ‘honour all of those women and men who between 1905-1914 braved derision, hardship and suffering in prison for the cause of Votes for Women. The significance of 13th October was that this was the date of the very first arrest in the militant fight for the women’s cause. On that day in 1905, Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney unfurled a Votes for Women banner at a public meeting in Manchester. The banner later came into the possession of Preston Suffragette Nellie Higginson, who donated it to Manchester Museums, and it is now in the possession of the People’s History Museum. I recently discovered this archived photograph of Nellie, who at this point was herself a J.P., with Miss Mary Kenney (Annie Kenney’s niece) and the Lady Mayoress of Manchester, commemorating the donation.

Another Preston Suffragette, Grace Alderman, mentions Prisoners’ Day in a letter written in 1964, which is kept in the Lancashire Archives. She explains that less and less people are able to make it to London for the event as they age, and highlights fellow Preston Suffragette Beth Hesmondhalgh as one of those who can no longer attend. Grace describes the events as ‘beginning with tea and then speakers’, and copies of Calling All Women survive to describe these in more detail.

For example, in 1939, ‘a reception was held at the Winter Garden of the Cora Hotel’ with eminent speakers from the movement. The following year ‘a party was held at the Forum Club, the speaker being Mrs Iorwerth Jones, J.P.’ In 1954 a meeting was held at Crosby Hall, where militant experiences were shared by those who experienced imprisonment, and a guest speaker discussed the improvements in prison conditions.

Special jubilee events were also held to commemorate Prisoners’ Day. The 1955 “Golden Jubilee” meeting at Caxton Hall was captured on film by British Pathe, and can be viewed online (https://www.britishpathe.com/asset/59293/). It features two of Preston’s Suffragettes, Nellie Higginson and Beth Hesmondhalgh (pictured below).

Ten years later, in 1965, a special “Diamond Jubilee” Prisoners’ Day event was held. Ex-prisoners were guests of honour, and spoke at length about their reminiscences of that time. Those unable to attend sent messages which were read aloud on their behalf. Richard Dunn of the Associated British Pathe premiered his new documentary titled Emancipation of Women (1890-1930), which documented the changes in women’s lives during that period. The documentary can be found (in two parts) in the British Pathe archive (https://www.britishpathe.com/asset/96350/).

Prisoners’ Day was commemorated until the late-1970s, when dwindling membership numbers caused the Fellowship to end, and it faded into history. Today the Suffragette Fellowship Collection is held by the London Museum, and includes a range of objects and printed materials relating to the group, and the women’s suffrage movement.